Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @03:51PM
from the we-need-better-names dept.

roccomaglio writes "The suspect who is accused of planning to bomb his high school in Tampa updated his Facebook status with the following: 'The weirdest thing happened today...when my homie Nic Peezy was trying to connect to a wireless network the connections list came up and one of them was called: FBI_SURVEILLANCE_VAN,' The FBI might want to revisit their wireless network naming conventions."

I don't believe that one bit. First off, we can assume that the FBI has more than one surveillance van, in which they can't all have the same SSID. They would include some sort of vehicle ID, etc. Second, this kid was living in some delusional word trying to make himself out to be a lot more than he was. I think he was hinting to his friends on FB and trying to sound like a badass of some sort. He was obviously running his mouth about his plans, which is how he was caught - someone turned him in. Perhaps that was his way of reaching out for help before he actually acted. Regardless, just because he posted it on FB doesn't mean that his friend really saw that wireless SSID.

this joke made its way around my circles a few months ago. you're supposed to change the name of your home wireless network to "fbi surveillance van" (those exact words, too) to freak out people who are hanging around your house stealing bandwidth. this isn't the stupidest article that's been posted, but it's close.

"I_got_pussy_for_installation" was one ssid I saw once(well, thrice). it wasn't exactly that string though, as it was in finnish. funny anyways.

anyhow, if some neighbor of his(this guy) knew of the fbi raid or surveillance, they might have just put it up to spite. the ssid i saw might've been intentional by some tongue in cheek chick - or not.

My SSID is "SHOCKING PORN" and when my sister-in-law got wifi, I made sure she understood there was a password and we set the SSID to "Fuck Off, Freeloaders!"

My general experience is that most of the time the immediate neighbors on both sides wifi bleeds in/out at about 1 "bar" of strength, so its not like anybody even sees the SSIDs unless they are in my house or outside.

Look, I title my WiFi networks weird things all the time, just because I know strangers will see it and be confused. Some are great wordplay, some are simply bizarre non-sequitors, some of them are downright disgusting, and some are deliberately misleading.

My hunch is that this network is NOT that of an actual FBI surveillance van, but the product of a fun-loving person setting up their router.

That said, it would be pretty simple to use wifi sniffing tools to pinpoint the source of the signal and actually,

Announcing your presence and watching the results can be very telling.FBI isn't stupid, and they do know their business*. They are educated. So it's best to assume something else is going on then to assume they are stupid; not that mistakes don't happen.

It's lie someone doing a magic trick, and they pull the wrong card.haha what a moron..then 2 minutes later you are opening an egg with your card in it.

Roughly 10 years ago, I was war-driving and one of the hotspots came up: 'CIA SAFE HOUSE'. The sad part was, I wasn't sure if it was a joke or if someone was actually that daft. It was a posh area of town, so I'm still undecided to this day.

I suppose that FBI agents are so technically inept that they commonly carry wifi routers in their vans (which would be completely unnecessary) and name their networks this obviously? I've seen "FBI" networks at least a couple of times, when not wardriving, so I doubt I it is easy to just stumble upon such stupidly named but authentic networks. Why didn't the person who submitted this article, or the one who approved it, realize that the moron of interest is not really smart enough to uncover an FBI investig

No, it doesn't. It really needs to be something that actually identifies you as an officer, eg a fake id. I can wear a shirt that says FBI on it and that's fine. If I tried to use the shirt to get into a secured area, that would be different as I'd be using it for identification.

And people in the FBI are banned from wearing identifying clothing unless on an op. So anyone walking down the street wearing an FBI shirt is not in the FBI, guaranteed, so it could never be considered identification.

And that's probably what it was. I have a friend who named his wifi network something similar. It's not an uncommon joke, and honestly, do you really think the Feds would have a visible wifi network, much less one that is so conspicuously named? Give me a break. What a complete and utter non-story.

My son came home from college in 2010 and while attempting to connect him to our home network, I see in his connection history, an SSID of all numbers, like 000-00-0000. It took me a moment, but then realized some douche in his dorm must have been running a wifi access point and when he saw 'SSID', must have assumed it meant Social Security ID.

Sure if you see a random Wifi spot with a spooky name, I would agree with you. But you're missing part of the story. Just before the kid got busted is when the Wifi spot showed up. It wasn't there before. Suddenly the spooky Wifi spot shows up and right after that the kid gets busted.

So if it is a coincidence that a neighbor named his Wifi spot something spooky to keep the kids out, then it's one heck of a coincidence.

While that may be a meme never underestimate the dumbshit stupidity of the feds. true story:

My late sis was the head of the local clic and pretty much had the sheep in line whenever she was at the local hangout which was this video arcade. So one of the Bambi types comes up to her and says 'there is somebody out there that wants to see you" and when she heads out what does she see? Classic fed, complete with ear piece, dark suit, board up the ass attitude, the whole works. I swear he goes "We're uhhh Jehov

I have a wireless router running named FBILOADNET.
Wonder how many people have tried to access the network? Alll of them have failed, as I can guarantee not even the NSA could crack into my wireless server and either use it or access anything connected to it of mine.

Sounds like a good strategy.. have a honeypot wifi network with the name corresponding to your last name or address.. Let people waste their time trying to crack it when really it's just your old linksys sitting around. Of course, it's also a waste of power and effort when no one actually cares to see my traffic.

The statement "it's not legal to buy" is correct, even if innacurate. It implies that the buyer commits some offense. However, it is illegal to buy in that to buy, someone must sell it to you, and that sale is illegal. So it is not legal to buy it because somone at the transaction is breaking the law.

No, not really. All they need to sniff your packets is a client that can connect to your network (e.g. a laptop or phone). Doesn't stop them from using a completely separate system for their internal communications.